It should be clear to everyone that officers and personnel of the Indian Army, paramilitary forces and the State Police are made of much sterner stuff than is sought to be projected, and they can hardly be demoralised by observations said to have been made by anybody. It is unfortunate that a bogey of demoralisation of the Indian Army, paramilitary forces and the State Police is being raised.

These are the words of the Supreme Court of India in a recent judgment.

The brief background of the matter: Apublic interest litigation was filed in the court seeking a probe into 1,528 ‘extrajudicial’ killings that allegedly took place in Manipur between 1979 and 2012. The court constituted a Special Investigation Team (SIT) to look into the allegations, and it continues to monitor the inquiry.

On multiple occasions, the CBI faced criticism from the court for an “unduly long investigation” that was being followed up “rather casually”. On July 30, 2018, the CBI and the armed forces were slated by the court. The harshest bits were directed at them through oral observations, which were widely reported by the press — “in varying degrees of accuracy” as the Supreme Court put it. The court has not deemed it fit to reproduce the observations and I will not do it either. You can find various press reports online.

The observations prompted personnel of the Manipur police to file several writ petitions with the support of their colleagues, a few hundred officers of the Indian Army and paramilitary forces. Intriguingly, the petitions sought, of all the things, the recusal of the two Supreme Court judges overseeing the SIT, arguing that the observations of the court had prejudiced the probe and the trial of the accused officers, and had “demoralised” the forces. The court rightly dismissed the petitions, observing: “As mentioned earlier, the Indian Army, paramilitary forces and the Manipur police are made of sterner stuff and are disciplined forces strong enough to take everything in their stride. To contend that some observations said to have been made by this court have demoralised the Indian Army, the paramilitary forces and the Manipur police is suggestive of a weakness in them… That apart, there is no material to support the theory of the Indian Army, paramilitary forces and the Manipur police being demoralised. It is only a submission made for some unfathomable reason.”

Quite a few countries have made the blunder of believing that armed forces can do no wrong and must be immune from all and any scrutiny. One such country happens to be in our neighbourhood — Pakistan. The country continues to pay for that fallacy even though decades have passed since its army first intervened in domestic affairs. What began as harmless reconstruction of roads and other infrastructure eventually led to the army taking over each and every institution in Pakistan. Putting any institution on that hallowed pedestal leads to only and only disaster, without exception.

In another paragraph in its judgment, the Supreme Court of India lays great emphasis on an exercise which is rapidly losing stock in the world — the right to know the truth. While invoking astudy of the 62nd session of the Human Rights Commission and the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights, the court observes: “It is necessary to know the truth so that the law is tempered with justice. The exercise for knowing the truth mandates ascertaining whether fake encounters or extrajudicial executions have taken place and if so, who are the perpetrators of the human rights violations and how can the next of kin be commiserated with and what further steps ought to be taken, if any.”

There can be no greater act of cruelty than to deny the victims of atrocities and their loved ones the acknowledgement that what they suffered or lived through was not a lie. That it did happen to them. It was real. Which is why several countries — Canada, Australia, Germany and Rwanda, among others — have constituted ‘Truth Reconciliation Commissions’. Sometimes these commissions are act with restorative and not retributive ends, but that is not to say that sometimes retribution as an end of justice is also very important.

Dushyant holds a brief for the argumentative Indian

Quite a few countries have made the blunder of believing that armed forces can do no wrong and must be immune from all scrutiny

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